Canada’s overdose crisis is getting worse, not better. In 2016, there were 2,861 opioid-related deaths. Last year, there were more than 4,000.

All of them were preventable.

As the NDP gathers in Ottawa this weekend for its national policy convention, many hope that this issue will be front and centre. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has already indicated that he favours the decriminalization of all drugs – not because it’s the popular but because it’s the right thing to do.

In just over two years, Canada has gone from one supervised injection site (in Vancouver) to 30 countrywide. Almost every major city in Canada now has a place where people can go to use drugs with clean equipment and the guidance of health professionals trained in spotting and responding to overdoses.

But still, the death count continues to rise. The threat of criminalization remains a barrier to accessing these critical harm-reduction programs.

We will not be able to end this crisis until we move drug use out of the criminal justice system and into the health-care system, where it belongs.

Supervised injection sites are a step in that direction, but alone they are not enough. They operate through a legal exemption that protects people from arrest for possession while on the premises. However, that protection ends at the door. The threat of criminal charges and all the negative consequences that come with them remains very real.

Indeed, after Ottawa’s first injection site opened, Ottawa police launched “Project Mitigate,” a drug trafficking investigation that specifically targeted the neighbourhood surrounding the facility. Two months of police resources were spent on policing drug users, most of them homeless. Many drug users now avoid the supervised injection site, finding it safer to use alone, despite the clear risk to their health.

These resources would undoubtedly have been better spent on harm-reduction and treatment programs.

Fortunately, we can learn from models that have been adopted by other countries.

Portugal, for example, decriminalized all drugs more than 15 years ago. Citizens are permitted to carry up to the equivalent of 10 days’ worth of drugs for their personal use. The results have been dramatic.

Before decriminalization, 100,000 people – or one per cent of the country’s population – was addicted to heroin. By 2011, that number had been halved. By the fall of 2017, it had halved again. Portugal now has among the lowest rates of drug mortality in all of Europe.

Every day we wait, more people die. In Ottawa alone, there are an average of three to four overdoses each day. Those are just the ones we know about. Many more people refuse to call 911 when they or someone they know is overdosing, for fear of arrest.

Some Liberal party members have pushed for their party to consider decriminalization beyond cannabis, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has repeatedly dismissed it. His government’s plan to legalize cannabis is not enough to counter decades of disastrous and harmful drug policy in Canada.

Here the NDP can distinguish itself by adopting and promoting the evidence-based policies needed to slow the crisis.

This weekend, the NDP can choose to be the party with the courage to adopt a policy that stands to save the lives of some of the most marginalized people in our society. New Democrats can and should send a strong signal that the it’s time to move beyond a flawed war on drugs and instead promote policies that tackle the root causes of addiction and value the intrinsic worth of all Canadians.

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